Tovah forced her gritted jaw to relax before she answered. “Ben’s a better shaper. I get it, Spider. Ben works hard. Ben’s a good guide. Ben can make the Eiffel Tower out of a couple of toothpicks. Yeah, I know.”
“You could do it too. If you wanted.”
“Well, I don’t want!” she shouted. “I don’t want to be a guide. I don’t want what Ben wants, or you want, okay? I don’t go to sleep at night with dreams of helping the world finds its way, all right? I just want to find my own!”
She glared at him, but it was next to impossible to determine Spider’s expression. He rubbed a leg over his head. She’d seen him do the same in the waking world, run a hand over and over his hair, rumpling it.
“I just worry about you, that’s all. If you’re wandering around and things go wonky—”
Tovah waved a hand. “It’s no different than anything else here. Yes, sometimes things get scary here. But I know they’re not real. I know it’s a nightmare. And I get out of it. I’m not a sleeper.”
“Sleepers have nightmares. Shapers don’t.”
She sighed. “Fine. So sometimes things get…out of control. Sometimes someone with a little too much desire makes it ugly for the rest of us. Just like in the waking world. The difference is, in here, I can control what happens to me. It’s not real.”
The light around him went out. All she saw were the glinting rubies of his eyes. “Dreams are just as real as anything else, girlie. When’re you gonna learn that?”
A smart retort rose to her lips, but too late. Spider had vanished. He’d been in the Ephemeros a long, long time. Tovah didn’t have the skill to find him if he didn’t want to be found.
Dreams were as real as anything else. Four years ago she’d have laughed at that. She’d been married to her college sweetheart and trying to have a baby. She hadn’t known the Ephemeros existed. Spider had been the one to introduce her to this second reality, and now guilt singed her for snapping at him.
Tovah pushed through the door and the club laid itself out before her. The edges were blurry, formed by the desires of those closer to it than she, or those with stronger shaping skills. That didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to build a world, nor destroy one. She was only here to enjoy it.
The music was loud, the lights flashing. While there were oddities here and there—a clock that ran backwards, a sign upon which the letters kept changing—those were common quirks of the dream world and as comforting in their own way as proof she really was in the Ephemeros and not something darker, like insanity. The patrons here seemed more interested in manipulating themselves than the environment, which was fine with her. Tovah preferred a setting that mirrored her normal reality more closely than, say, a dance floor set above a volcanic pit.
Not that it couldn’t shift at any time, depending on the whim of one strong shaper, or the collective desire of many lesser ones. But for now it looked like any other club, albeit with a few patrons whose unusual appearances were not merely cosmetic.
One of the first things most people learned to do in the Ephemeros was represent themselves as something different than their natural appearance. After all, what was the fun in looking the way you did in real life when you could be taller, thinner or sexier? Representation was about how you felt, not necessarily what you were. She passed a woman with gleaming red eyes and a set of onyx wings cascading to the floor. The woman gave her a once-over, sliding a red tongue along glistening lips, but didn’t approach. She was probably a middle-aged man in her waking life, Tovah thought with a small grin. Ah, well. To each his or her gender-bending own.
Tovah had always represented pretty close to her true appearance, with one small exception. Compared to the people around her, some who sprouted fangs or wings or fur, she felt it wasn’t dishonest to represent as whole when in reality she’d been damaged. And yes, that was an issue her therapist would’ve spent hours on, back before she’d discovered the Ephemeros and still needed therapy. Tovah didn’t care.
Here, in this world, she didn’t have to put on a face for anyone. She didn’t have to do what anyone else wanted or expected her to do. She answered to nobody. In the Ephemeros, Tovah could be sexy and free and selfish.
She could dance.
Someone had shaped an oasis in the center of the club. A small fountain. Some trees. Soft white sand. Tovah recognized the shaper’s touch and moved toward it.
Ben sat on the fountain’s tiled rim, dabbling his fingers in the water until he caught a shimmering goldfish and pulled it from the water where it wriggled and splashed. It mustn’t have pleased him, because he tossed it back and looked up as she approached. The water he flicked toward her became diamonds in midair and fell, clinking, to the sand. There they became rivulets, like mercury, flashing silver until they disappeared.
“Tovah,” Ben greeted her with a nod. “Did Spider find you?”
“Yes.”
Behind her, the club pulsed and flashed, tempting her to move her body to the music. In front of her the oasis was a study in peace and calm. Tovah stayed on the edge, in between both and part of neither.
Ben glanced over her shoulder and smiled slowly. “The club scene? That’s challenging.”
It was actually much easier than what he’d done, since in the club she had only to shape her own space and leave the rest to the collective will of those who sought the same nightscape she had. Here in Ben’s oasis, he was both creator and sovereign. The club could encroach, but not overtake, what he’d done.
“This is nice,” she told him. Her boots touched the edges of sand shading into the club’s concrete floor.
“You can say it. Nice, but boring.”
“Depends on what you’re planning on doing in it.” Tovah lifted a brow.
Ben laughed and looked around. “Not what you’re planning on doing out there.”
Ben didn’t need to dream the same sorts of things Tovah did. She didn’t ask why he needed to create an oasis, or water, or the fish he was always looking to catch. She wished he had as much consideration for her privacy.
She looked over her shoulder at the club, which had gotten very far away. She pulled it closer with an effort that shouldn’t have taken as much will, but did. Ben’s oasis was stronger than her dance club. Ben was stronger.
“I like to dance,” she said simply and left “What’s it to you?” unspoken.
Ben apparently heard it in her voice, because he smiled and stood. He represented as he always did, a tall man with sandy hair and regular features, eyes the color of sun-faded denim and a long-legged, lumbering gait. He wore the same pair of worn brown cords and blue button-down shirt every time she saw him and, like his need to shape a space of quiet in the midst of chaos, Tovah never asked why.
“I like the sound of flowing water,” he said as though she’d spoken aloud. The fountain tinkled a little louder. “I find it very soothing.”
“Dancing is a great tension reliever.” She drew a line in the sand with her toe. “Dare you to try it, Ben.”
Eight months ago Ben had shown up on the edge of a meadow Spider had been encouraging her to shape for practice. At first she’d thought he was a sleeper, so befuddled had he looked. In moments it had become clear he was a shaper when he turned her meadow into the seashore, Spider into a sand-crab and Tovah into a mermaid. He had a lot of power right away and clearly no knowledge of how to use it. Or of etiquette. She’d been the same way the first time she realized the Ephemeros was a real place, not just a part of her sleeping mind.
Eight months ago he’d been brand new to shaping, but he’d passed Tovah’s skill and now rivaled Spider. Ben worked hard at shaping. At making details. And he wanted, as she did not, to be a guide.
“I don’t dance.” His words were easy enough, without sting.
Tovah let them bounce off her without flinching. “That’s too bad.”
She’d never asked him why he wanted a mermaid so badly, or what that had meant to him. Or if he’d been disappointed to discover
that the woman in his arms that first night, the mouth he’d kissed, belonged to someone who wasn’t a figment of his imagination. Who wasn’t a fulfillment of his desire. They never mentioned the way he’d literally swept her off her feet and into his embrace within moments of seeing her for the first time.
Tovah thought about it, though.
“Sure you won’t join me, instead?” Ben waved a hand at the fountain, the sand, the trees.
She tilted her head and gave him a smile. “Only if you’ll dance with me.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, shook his head and laughed. “Tovah…”
Impulsively, stupidly, she reached for his hand and snagged his sleeve. She pulled him a little, knowing all he had to do was want to resist her and he wouldn’t budge a step. But he moved, reluctantly closer. She put his hand on her hip and put hers on his shoulder, then held up the other for him to take.
“I don’t dance,” Ben repeated.
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
Despite his protests, they started moving at the same time. One, two, three, four. A simple box step, set to the music Tovah pulled from the air around them as prettily as from a music box.
“See?” she told him, tipping her head back to look into his face. “You’re a natural.”
Ben stopped. His hand tightened on her hip while the other squeezed her fingers. “I didn’t say I couldn’t dance. Just that I don’t.”
His mouth had tasted sweet, his lips warm. His breath had filled her, creature of the sea though he’d willed her to be, and she’d taken him deep inside her. The kiss, that first and only kiss, had lasted a second and a lifetime. They’d become closer since then, both students of Spider, and they’d shared jokes and laughter and more than a bit of not-always-so-friendly rivalry…but they’d never spoken of that kiss or what it had meant.
Or what it hadn’t.
She shook her head, backing away. “Right. I get it.”
“Tovah—”
She held up a hand. “No, no, Ben. Don’t worry about it. I just thought…never mind. I’ll catch you another night.”
He scraped a hand over his hair, standing it on end, that small detail she knew he hadn’t shaped on purpose but which told her so much about how he was representing just then. Ben was always full of details like that, every tiny piece of him and what he made around him perfect and natural. What she struggled with, he simply did.
She waited for him to take her in his arms again, or at least to call her back, but Ben didn’t. “Right. See you, Tovah.”
She took another step back, letting go of the oasis and again shaping the club, and Ben let her do it. She felt the release of his will on hers like the slow unwinding of thread from a spool, bit by bit until he’d gone. Flashing lights and pulsing beats filled in around her, and her heart leaped to the thud of the bass that also pounded in the floor beneath her feet.
She had come to dance, after all. It was time to get to it.
Tovah wasn’t the only person looking for a partner. Shapers and nonshapers alike moved to the ever-changing music. A man approached her, his eyes narrowed with desire, smile practiced and charming.
“How about it?”
Waves of desire hovered around him. Though easily brushed aside, they tugged her, and when she extended a tendril of desire toward him, he responded at once. His brown eyes shifted briefly toward green. She relaxed the shield protecting her from the push and pull of the collective will. Still, he did nothing. He wasn’t a shaper. She could feel what he wanted, but he couldn’t make it happen.
He needed her, for that.
“How about what?” She leaned closer, checking him out. Laughter burst from her throat. Colors brightened and dimmed around them as her focus at keeping her surroundings in place got fuzzy for a moment. She looked back at her would-be wooer.
He was cute. Probably representing taller and broader than he was in the waking world, but so what? Unless he suddenly grew tentacles, she wasn’t about to complain.
Her snappy answer set him back a little bit. He was probably used to his dream women slavering all over him. His teeth were very, very white and clean. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”
Fooling around with a sleeper was tricky. Wanting something and knowing how to get it were two separate things in the Ephemeros, as in the waking world. Sleepers could influence shapers but because they lacked control, things could easily go awry. Sleepers were generally too easily distracted. Keeping them focused was too much like guiding for her tastes.
Still, the offer was appealing. She nodded, reaching out her hand. He took it with fingers soft and warm, the small and somehow intimate detail of the calluses telling her more than anything else probably would.
He knew how to dance. Each step landed with perfection. The hand on the small of her back led her with gentle pressure. They moved effortlessly through a crowd that parted to make way for them. He didn’t know how to waltz, but she did, and that was enough.
“Like music-box dolls,” he said suddenly.
“Is that what we are?” Tovah laughed as he dipped her so low her hair swept the floor.
The people around them became music-box dolls, and she did nothing to change them. If that was what her partner wanted, well, so long as he kept dancing, she didn’t care. She just wanted to dance.
His breath, hot in her ear, got heavier. She closed her eyes, pleasure already spiking through her. She felt a whisper of breath, the tentative touch of a tongue. She opened her eyes to look at him.
And then he disappeared.
“Dammit,” Tovah murmured as she was left holding nothing but vaguely shimmering air.
So much for taking a chance on a sleeper. He hadn’t left so much as a scent behind. He’d woken.
Chapter Two
The boy held his red-and-white striped ball tight in his fist, knowing once it fell from his fingers it would be lost to him. He’d watched from the corner as the pretty lady with the curly hair talked to the man by the fountain, but she hadn’t seen him. She’d been busy out there beyond the shadows, and he was too afraid to leave them. She’d been distracted while she was dancing. The boy had felt her concentration falter. He’d watched her partner vanish. He watched her, now, as she looked at what had formed around her.
The club had become a dungeon. Music without words hammered, muted through thick stone walls studded with dusty, flickering bulbs bare of any shades. The boy hung back in shadows. Watching.
He wanted to ask her why, if she could shape anything she wanted, she was letting herself be put into a place like this. He didn’t want to be here. He’d get out, if he weren’t so afraid of stepping beyond the doorway. He’d get out and run away from this bad place, from the bad people who’d put him there. Maybe she didn’t know how much power she really had, he thought, watching her face wrinkle in disgust at the new scene.
She seemed nice. Maybe, he thought with a spark of hope he hadn’t felt in a very long time, this lady would help him. He stepped forward, ball clutched so tight in his fingers the rubber dented.
“Mrs.?”
She turned, mouth opening in silent surprise.
He was too late to greet her, though. Two figures moved out of the shadows. The bad people. The witchwoman with the long fingernails and the man who was always with her, his belt heavy with tools and slung low over dirty denim-covered hips.
“Looky, looky,” said the witchwoman.
The lady from the club didn’t hesitate. “Fuck off.”
“That’s not very nice.”
Next to the witchwoman, the man’s teeth flashed. They’d grown longer. All of them sharp, not just the canines. A tongue fluttered briefly in the curve of a nasty smile before vanishing into the darkness of his mouth.
Fear flooded the narrow hall around them. It came from the lady and shot through the boy’s veins like ice. It set him back until he scraped cold stone. She couldn’t help him. She was too afraid.
She’d stopped trying to move against
the floor into which she’d now sunk up to her ankles. The stone behind the man with the tools shimmered, then solidified. “This isn’t what I was looking for!”
The man growled, low in his throat, the warning of a dog getting ready to attack.
The boy cried out and dropped the ball, which rolled across the stone floor and landed at the lady’s feet. She looked at it, then him, and her eyes softened. She reached for him, but he was too far away. He could reach her if he ran across the room, if he could get to her, but the bad people were between them.
The witchwoman would hurt him again, pinch him with her long nails and pull his hair. And the man…oh, the man…was something else. The boy shrank back, hands outflung, pushing.
Pushing.
The witchwoman hissed into his ear. “Don’t do that!”
But he did it, again and again, pushing with all his might to keep them from getting to him. They could take the lady, instead, hurt her, hurt anyone but him. He pushed.
The fear in the air became terror when the man’s face began to change. In seconds the features had blurred, shifted. Become feral. A dogman. A wolfish muzzle, a dog’s pointed ears, but the bright intelligent eyes of a man. Coarse black fur tipped with silver gleamed in the torchlight.
Tongue lolling, silver drool glistening, it snapped its jaws. Foam curdled in the corners of the dogman’s jaws, and torchlight reflected green inside its eyes.
“She won’t help you,” the witchwoman said, but didn’t touch him.
The lady pulled her feet free of the muck into which she’d sunk and stepped back automatically when the dogman moved toward her. The boy could smell it now, the stink of raw meat and blood, and something underneath, like earth.
“You don’t scare me!” the lady yelled.
“No?” The witchwoman laughed.
The jaws snapped again, the teeth flashing, but the voice came from deep inside the dogman’s throat. It sounded strangled and faintly amused.